From Political Exile to Outstanding Ethnologist for Northeastern Siberia: 2 Jochelson As Self-Taught Fieldworker During HIS First Sibiriakov Expedition 1894–1897
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First published in “Jochelson, Bogoras and Shternberg: A Scientific Exploration of Northeastern Siberia and the Shaping of Soviet Ethnography”, edited by Erich Kasten, 2018: 35 – 59. Fürstenberg/Havel: Kulturstiftung Sibirien. — Electronic edition for www.siberien-studies.org FROM POLITICAL EXILE TO OUTSTANDING ETHNOLOGIST FOR NORTHEASTERN SIBERIA: 2 JOCHELSON AS SELF-TAUGHT FIELDWORKER DURING HIS FIRST SIBIRIAKOV EXpeDITION 1894–1897. Erich Kasten The scientific exploration of the peoples and cultures of northeastern Siberia entered a new phase towards the end of the 19th century with Waldemar Jochelson. During the preceding 150 years, traveling scholars — mostly natural scientists of German or German-Baltic origin — had dedicated themselves to these tasks on behalf of the Rus- sian authorities (Kasten 2013).1 Jochelson, however, had a different background. First and foremost, his socio-critical convictions and his early career as a political activist distinguished him from most mainstream scientists of that time. Clearly, this had a considerable impact on his first encounters and acquaintances and his later research collaborations with indigenous people in these remote areas. Throughout his field- work he elaborated new methods of his own that, in some cases, gave direction to the emerging new discipline of Ethnology. Due to intense experiences in extreme situations Jochelson’s life took distinct turns: from an activist against social injustice to a political exile in Siberia, where he became interested in the indigenous peoples among whom he had to live. Then, many years later, he concluded his academic career in New York with his monumental opus in the form of significant monographs on the cultures of sev- eral peoples of northeastern Siberia. Throughout this time, he was substantially involved in the early shaping of Soviet ethnography. Jochelson participated prominently in three major ethnographic expeditions in northeastern Siberia: the Sibiriakov Expedition (1894–1897), the Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1897–1902) and the Riabushinskii Expedition (1908–1911). The Jesup North Pacific Expedition under the direction of Franz Boas has attracted considerable recent international attention (Krupnik and Fitzhugh 2001). In these and following discourses Boas’s potential influence on Jochelson’s later field research and the elaboration of his published works was a substantive issue though probably at times somewhat overestimated (Kasten and Dürr 2016: 27ff.). However, this view may be more qualified and rated differently if one considers Jochelson’s earlier writings that have so far been less well known, as they were 1 See also the new editions of earlier monographs from the 19th century in the series Bibliotheca Kamtschatica at the Foundation for Siberian Cultures: http://www.siberian-studies.org/publi- cations/bika_E.html 36 Erich Kasten difficult to access. He wrote these articles immediately after his first fieldwork during the Sibiriakov Expedition, where main features of his unique and often innovative research approach were already visible. This study will therefore focus on Jochelson’s earlier works that were initially published not only in Russian but also in German language. As Jochelson’s life and complete works have already been extensively presented and discussed elsewhere,2 only a brief biographical outline will be given here. In the following, the period of his early ethnographic work during the Sibiriakov Expedition will be investigated and analyzed more closely with regard to his primal attitudes and approaches from which he gradu- ally developed his distinct methodology. Biographical outline Waldemar Jochelson [Vladimir Il’ich Iokhel’son] was born in Wilna (Vilnius) in 1855, where he grew up in a Jewish-orthodox family. Due to his revolutionary activities (see next paragraph), he was arrested in 1885 and first served a prison sentence at the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. Thereafter he was condemned to ten years in exile in northeastern Siberia. During his years in exile he became acquainted with Waldemar Bogoras, who was sent there for the same political reasons. Both were obviously looking for intellec- tual challenges, and they discovered their common interest in ethnography. This also dovetailed with their unbroken revolutionary calling “to go into the people”, and a long-lasting friendship evolved. Thus, Jochelson and Bogoras gratefully accepted the invitation, sanctioned by the authorities, to participate in the Sibiriakov Expedition, whose purpose it was to conduct ethnographic-historical research in this region. The experiences ensuing from this work clearly gave rise to some noticeable turns or shift- ing ambitions in Jochelson’s later life, in that an academic career became a possibility, and his former political activities faded into the background. After his return to St. Petersburg in 1898, Jochelson went first to Switzerland to finish his studies there. But shortly afterwards a new opportunity arose which tied in with his ethnographic interests and gave him the prospect of expanding them. For Franz Boas had invited him — at the recommendation of Friedrich Wilhelm Radloff, the director of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St. Petersburg — to participate in the Jesup North Pacific Expedition. During the years 1900 to 1902 of the expedition, Jochelson and his wife Dina Brodskaia worked with the Koryak on the northern coast of the Okhotsk Sea and on the Taigonos Peninsula. On the way back he sojourned for some time with the Yukaghir near Verkhnekolymsk, who he knew from earlier, lengthy visits. 2 See Winterschladen 2016; Knüppel 2013; Brandišauskas 2009; Vakhtin 2001. The first two paragraphs will summarize and draw mostly on these earlier works. From political exile to outstanding ethnologist 37 After the expedition, Jochelson secured with Boas’s support a temporary appoint- ment at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he began to work up most of his research materials. The Jochelson couple also stayed for some time in Zurich, London and Berlin, where Waldemar Jochelson took part in various international congresses. Subsequently, he worked for a short time at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology in St. Petersburg. Eventually, in 1908, Jochelson was appointed director of the ethnological branch of another wide-ranging expedition. During the years 1908 to 1911 of this expedition, named after Russian entrepreneur and sponsor of the expedition Fedor Pavlovich Riabushinskii and organized by the Imperial Russian Geographical society, Jochelson investigated together with his wife and other collaborators the archaeology, culture, and language of the Aleut and the Itelmen on Kamchatka. At the same time, other members of the expedition devoted themselves independently to research in natural science. After their return to St. Petersburg, the Jochelsons again found themselves in a pre- carious professional and economic situation (see this volume, 66 f.) and the decided in 1922 to move and settle in New York once and for all. There again, Boas helped them to establish themselves by means of minor appointments at the American Museum of Natural History. Before his death in 1937, Jochelson managed to publish most of his research materials, though some of them came out only after his death. All of them still rank among the most significant ethno graphies of this region. Socio-critical ideas and revolutionary activities The rabbinic seminary that Jochelson attended in Vilnius was not just an educational institution for Jewish clergymen. It was there that in his youth Jochelson came into contact with the socio-critical and revolutionary thinking that fascinated him. After initial attempts by the government to close this facility, resistance to the Russian authorities arose there. From these student circles emerged — with recourse to the writings of philosophers und publicists such as Nikolai Chernyshevskii, Petr Lavrov and Aleksandr Gertsen — the Narodnik (“Friend of the People”) movement, a fore- runner of later organizations such as Zemlia i Volia (“Land and Freedom”) and Narod- naia Volia (“The Will of the People”) that Jochelson joined. Members of the rabbinic seminary also offered “continued political education” to the public at large and dis- seminated socio-critical circulars of their own. After attracting the attention of the secret police in 1875, Jochelson managed to escape arrest and went to Berlin, where he worked as a lathe operator in an engineer- ing factory. Before then he had acquired shoemaking skills — as part of his endeavor to see things from the laborers’ perspective. At the same time he attended open lec- tures and other events by social democratic organizations to upgrade his education in philosophy and political economy. On those occasions he met with distinguished 38 Erich Kasten social democrats such as Eduard Bernstein and Karl Johann Kautsky. Already at that time, Jochelson was publishing his first articles in Berlin on the situation in Russia for Vorwärts and The Social Democrat, journals of the social democratic party, as well as for a Russian language journal released in London. In 1876, Jochelson traveled illegally to Russia, where for some years he pursued political agitation in the Ukraine. Later, revolutionary missions took him back and forth between Moscow and St. Petersburg. He helped with the manufacture of fake passports and other documents, and organized the transport of illegal writings abroad. In the meantime, Jochelson